The New Power Party (NPP) yesterday accused the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) of failing to deliver on its policy commitments after planned amendments to mining and cross-strait laws failed to pass during this legislative session.
The DPP has been using all sorts of excuses to not move forward with important draft amendments, while requesting a three-week recess from Dec. 18 for its election campaigns, the NPP’s legislative caucus wrote on Facebook yesterday.
“If the DPP cannot deliver on campaign promises it made four years ago, why should it deserve a legislative majority [for another four years]?” it asked.
Photo: Wu Shu-wei, Taipei Times
President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in July said that DPP legislators would aim to complete draft bills to crack down on Chinese Communist Party (CCP) proxies operating in Taiwan in the current legislative session.
However, DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming (柯建銘) on Saturday confirmed that related amendments would not be able to pass the three readings in the legislative session as there was not enough time left.
Meanwhile, hopes of passing draft amendments to the Mining Act (礦業法) in this legislative session were also dashed after a proposal by the NPP to prioritize the bill was blocked by the DPP in a legislative meeting on Friday.
According to legislative laws, bills that do not clear a third reading by the end of a legislative term must be scrapped, with the exception of bills on government budgets.
The way amendments to the act have been handled in this legislative session is disgraceful, NPP Chairman Hsu Yung-ming (徐永明) said.
After filmmaker Chi Po-lin (齊柏林), who had exposed destructive mining operations, died in 2017, there seemed for a while to be a consensus across party lines that the act should be amended, but the DPP later began blocking proposed amendments and the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) stopped attending related meetings, he said.
The draft amendments to the act and those aimed at cracking down on CCP proxies were policies the DPP had promised the public, NPP Legislator Huang Kuo-chang (黃國昌) said.
While the DPP said that it could not pass amendments regarding CCP proxies in the current legislative session due to the laws’ far-reaching implications, if it expects people to vote for it again for the same reason, it would be “treating them as idiots,” he said.
Anyone curious about the delay to the draft amendments should first direct their questions to the DPP, KMT caucus whip William Tseng (曾銘宗) said.
Based on legislative records from the past three years, any bill the DPP wanted to pass would definitely pass, he added.
The DPP, which holds a legislative majority, is the primary reason the bills were not passed, People First Party (PFP) caucus whip Lee Hung-chun (李鴻鈞) said.
While the PFP has listed amendments to the act as a legislative priority, it could not influence the DPP’s decision, he added.
In response, Ker urged other parties not to engage in political manipulation.
DPP legislators Chen Ting-fei (陳亭妃) and Chao Tien-lin (趙天麟) said yesterday that, if re-elected, they would propose amendments to address CCP proxies.
Perhaps the January presidential and legislative elections could be considered as a poll on the proposed amendments, Chao said.
If people support the amendments, they would vote for the DPP instead of pro-China parties, he said, adding that if the DPP could win enough legislative seats, it would be able to complete the amendments.
Additional reporting by Huang Hsin-po and Hsieh Chun-lin
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,